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January 01, 2004

News from home
: Todd Sweet, a reader, sends email telling the story of a weblog created for the Stryker Brigade in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq. Before they were deployed in the fall, Sweet posted stories on his personal blog. It grew so much, he started a blog just for the brigade. Says Sweet:

To me, this is what blogging is all about - providing useful, user-driven content and making connections. Those that visit are starved for news about, and pictures of, loved ones. The feedback in the comments has been incredible.

Yes, this is hyperlocal news. And this medium and network make it possible.

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360
: A beautiful 360-degree view of New Year's on Times Square. Look up at the fall of ticker-rain.

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Yes, Aaron Brown does bore the land
: Reese Schonfeld, a big deal former exec in cable news, praises FoxNews coverage of Iraq on his weblog and also gives us the hard evidence to support what we've all known all along: Aaron Brown puts us all to sleep:

I believe CNN degraded itself when Hussein was captured on December 14th. It seemed to me CNN was holding its own with Fox, the BBC and was a little bit ahead of MSNBC during the morning hours. Then Aaron Brown big-footed and big-mouthed his way on the air and anchored and interviewed his way through some of the dullest television I’ve ever seen. (Details upon request.) As Brown appeared the ratings dropped. CNN led Fox from about 10:00 AM to 11:30. After that, FoxNews took over and won the day handily.

As someone we all know and love would say: Heh.

: AND by the way, here's a brand new weblog tracking cable news. [via Ranting Profs]

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Auditing tragedy
: The Coalition Provisional Authority releases its Mass Grave Strategy to identify the victims and compile the evidence of Saddam's genocidal crimes.

: They should send Alternet a copy of the findings so that perhaps they reconsider and add deposing a mass-murdering tyrant to their list of good things that happened in 2003.

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l'Americain
: Harry Stein goes to France to savor a little anti-Americanism:

At one point in my stay, an old friend, a French journalist, invited me to dine with her and her fiancé. "I think you’ll like him," she offered, "though of course he hates Americans."
"He does?" I said, already calculating how to decline the invite.
"Oh, yes. Almost everyone does…" ...
No discussion is necessary or desired: We represent everything that is dangerous and vile and fundamentally anti-human.
It’s as if one has never left the Upper West Side.

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The blogger's lament
: James Meigs, blogger (now that he has added links to his site) write a New Year's blogger's lament while the parties goes on downstairs:

I’ll be joining them in just a minute, well, a few minutes really (damn, I’d forgotten how slow dial-up is), just as soon as I’ve checked my blogs.

And a blogger's resolution:

7. I resolve to stop winding up at every social occasion somehow talking to the one person present who has never heard of a blog and then spending the rest of the night explaining the words "web" and "log" and what "fisking" is and why Instapundit is the necessary antidote to mainstream media and, hey, you guys don’t happen to have a computer around here, do you?

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Zeitgeist
: The annual Google Zeitgeist -- a survey of most popular search terms -- is up. It's vaguely interesting but essentially unsatisfying; it reveals Google's essential stone-skipping-pond nature. Technorati and Blogdex do a better job capturing the buzz of what people are actually talking about; Google captures merely our cultural 411.
Anyway...
The most popular brand searches were: 1. ferrari; 2. sony; 3. bmw; 4. disney; 5. ryanair; 6. hp; 7. dell; 8. easyjet; 9. last minute; 10. walmart
Ferrari? Ferrari? I don't get that.
Interesting that the most popular men and women in French searches were almost all American or British (Harry Potter) -- that is, not French.
Here is the most popular Japanese woman. Here's the runner-up.
The most popular Italian singer is a guy named Eros.

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Yankee
: Adam Curry returns to his other country, America, and starts waving the flag.

Being back in the states, if only for a few days, really helped me re-appreciate just how wonderful the country is. I found that I really have missed alot of america's uniqueness. Little things, like how a waiter introduces his/herself and announces that (s)he'll be 'taking care of you tonite'....
And what other country in the world has happy hour; two drinks for the price of one?
Above all, most folks in the US have a positive mind set and an optimistic outlook on life. Something I no longer detect at all in the netherlands, were I spend most of my time, and it appears to be a disturbing trend in the rest europe.

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Another group moblog
: Yesterday, I told you about a group moblog from Pud. Here's a German-language moblog [via Moe]. See this contribution. Translation: "Sexual therapy in large groups."
Now you know why I studied German.

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A reporter's blog from Baghdad
: Freelance Canadian journalist Tom Popyk has a blog. [via a reader] On last night's restaurant bombing:

There are two things that race though journalists' minds when the bang-bang gets close. First: Is everyone all right? Then: get to the scene.
It was a familiar one. the Nabil Restaurant, popular with print reporters and wealthier Iraqis, was reduced to ru bble. Five dead. Dozens injured, including three LA Times reporters. But mostly Iraqis. Again.
For all the concerns and criticisms about the US occupation, that fact remains that insurgents may target westerners, but they are actually killing their own people. This is not an accident. The attacks spread terror and fear, hampering development of a civil society. And at the same time they provide convenient, misplaced, expedient, blame to coalition forces: that somehow the attacks would end if the Americans were gone....

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Blog divorce
: Blogger Lisa Williams' husband said he resents her PC because she blogs too much (aside: can you blog too much?). They're working it out: He shared; she's making breakfast; blog bliss.
But I'll bet it won't be long before we see our first blog divorce (with Glenn Reynolds listed as corespondent).

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A node by any other name
: Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's polygamist parents (and a very nice guy) gives an interview to the BBC on the future of the net:

The Enum initiative attempts to turn phone numbers into net addresses and give people a universal way of contacting anyone, provided they know at least one e-mail, address, phone or pager number for them.
Allied to this is the work on Naming Authority Pointer Records (NATPR) that broadens the net's reach considerably.
Mr Cerf has proposed extending the net to other planets
"It allows you to take a domain name and map it into whatever ID space you want to," he said, "I think that's a sleeping giant because it allows you to escape the bonds of the DNS and move into new naming spaces that have very different characteristics."
NATPR allows almost anything, such as book or magazine ISDN codes, to become an address space that the net can work with.

[via Om Malik]

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Security
: I went out this morning for my run (no hangover; that's the advantage of an incredibly dull New Year's Eve) and looked up to see military jet contrails, seven of them, stretching out in spokes from New York as their hub.

: See the comments. Joi Ito is high on not being high.

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Say it ain't so
: The Washington Post today debunks the Times story that argued (rather than reported) that CBS paid Michael Jackson $1 million for his 60 Minutes interview. I'll bet we'll be seeing one of those new, verbose Times corrections -- or an Okrent ombudman column -- any day now.

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God bless New York and its attitude
: Orange-alert hats to ring in the high-security New Year! It is our city's f.u. to the terrorists.

: Snored on the couch until my son woke me up 10 minutes before midnight; it's our New Year's Eve tradition. Survived Dick Clark's product placement (interviewing M&Ms). Now going back to sleep.

: Happy New Year, my friends.

: But a few security alerts before bed....
: In Washington a jet in from England was detained on the tarmac as passengers were questioned.
: The NY Times reports that a plane from Mexico was sent back.

The American authorities in the last week directed a United States-bound flight from Mexico to turn around in midair and imposed extraordinary security measures on at least six other incoming flights because of terrorist concerns, federal officials said Wednesday.Officials were so concerned about possible attacks on at least five foreign flights that landed in the United States, including one on Wednesday night at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, that they moved the planes away from the main terminals and rescreened the passengers.

: See this photo, too: Orange hats and the red, white & blue.

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